Forty games over .500 when he starts, 15 under when he does not. Manager Bruce Bochy well knows the difference Angel Pagan’s presence has made since he became a Giant in 2012, and he is tired of hearing about it.

“Right now, that’s no excuse for us to go through what we’ve gone through the last two weeks,” Bochy said Tuesday before his team proved they can win without Pagan when they have good pitching, clutch hitting and someone else batting leadoff.

Tim Lincecum pitches against the St. Louis Cardinals at AT&T Park on July 1. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Tim Lincecum followed his no-hitter with eight shutout innings, and the Giants beat the Cardinals 5-0 to end their four-game losing streak. Lincecum last had consecutive scoreless outings in 2011.

The man constantly talks about consistency and cannot be more consistent than this: He threw 113 pitches, 73 strikes, exactly as he did in last Wednesday’s no-hitter. He allowed four Cardinals hits, walked two and struck out six.

The Giants improved to 60-74 since the start of 2012 without Pagan, who has had a setback in his back and will see a specialist Wednesday. They are 156-116 when he starts.

Bochy emphasized this is not a one-man outfit, though.

“A team is not built like that,” he said. “You have to deal with injuries, guys having days off. We have guys who are capable of filling in. . . . I know the numbers aren’t good. At the same time, not one guy carries a ballclub. It just doesn’t work that way.”

The Giants then scored five runs by the fifth inning against Marco Gonzalez in his second big-league start, the first three in the fourth inning after Lincecum escaped a bases-loaded, no-out situation.

Pence singled, Buster Posey doubled him home and Sandoval unleashed his home run, which barely cleared the fence in left. Sandoval’s past three homers have come right-handed, his weaker side. He has not hit a left-handed homer since May 26.

Juan Perez’s leadoff single in the fifth started a rally that featured Pence’s RBI double and a Hector Sanchez groundball that was weak yet got Pence home from third.

Lincecum followed last year’s no-hitter with one of the worst starts of his career, an eight-run shellacking over 3 2/3 innings by the Reds. This one was much different.

He walked Matt Carpenter to start Tuesday’s game but retired the next three Cardinals, starting with a three-pitch strikeout of Oscar Taveras.

Allen Craig singled with one out in the second to keep Johnny Vander Meer’s descendents happy, the first hit off Lincecum since Paul Goldschmidt’s double in the sixth inning of the June 20 game at Arizona.

Lincecum was on a sustained roll until the Cardinals loaded the bases with nobody out in the fourth inning on Jhonny Peralta’s double and Matt Adams’ single – neither well struck, both perfectly placed – and a 2-2 fastball that hit Yadier Molina in the elbow.

In a sign that maybe Lincecum truly has turned a corner, he worked his way out of it by striking out Craig and Jon Jay before Daniel Descalso’s groundball.